My own opinion is that I’m cautiously optimistic. This doesn’t seem like one of those people that learns how to use Blender, creates a model, and posts a screenshot of it on Reddit claiming “new product coming!”.
In fact, this seems somewhat similar to the Fenix A320 announcement. New, never before heard of developer, with supposedly a lot of experience on the team, including real 787 pilots and real flight sim development projects under their belt.
With a target release of sometime this year, and presence at FSWeekend next month, hopefully we find out a lot of very information very soon.
We see this time and time again. An aircraft is announced from some developer never heard of before they show off some modeling (which really isn’t the hard part) to build up hype and then they get jammed up on the coding and it all falls apart. 2026? I doubt it.
I don’t think they’d get a presentation slot at FSWeekend if the project wasn’t in a good spot already. From what it sounds like in the Discord, the project team is already doing test flights with the aircraft.
I don’t understand announcing a plane that already exists in three different versions for MSFS. Stock Asobo 787-10, Horizon Sim 787-9 variant, Bravo Airspace 787-8.
Yes, those are all basically offshoots of the default sim -10, but each has their own development and changes and get updated. To differentiate, you’re going to need to release a “study level” 787 and charge a large amount. Certainly there are folks on here that are “Instant Buy!” people, but that can’t be enough to make a business case in an already crowded 787 space.
My understanding is the following from what is stated in the article, the website, and the very informal Q&A that the project lead is conducting on their Discord:
The systems will be simulated to “a very deep level”.
A flight manual already exists and is being written at this time, and it is expected to be “very long and very detailed”.
The model itself is built from the ground up, not based on the default Asobo model.
The model has a cabin model.
The project team is conducting test flights daily, so clearly the aircraft is in quite a developed state at this point in time.
In my opinion, the 787 offerings we have available right now don’t really scratch the itch that the QualityWings 787. If the Vector 787 is even close to that, I think we’re in for a great product.
Good luck to them. I look at the long and winding path Bluebird Sim has taken trying to do a 757, so count me skeptical at this point. Happy to be proven wrong.
Don’t misunderstand me. A true study level 787 (let’s say “PMDG level”?) would be a fantastic technical achievement. That just likely isn’t enough to make it successful in a crowded market.
I think Bluebird made a bit of a mistake announcing the project a little too early, especially since they pivoted from medium-fidelity to high-fidelity halfway through their development. Vector sim, whoever these guys are, were smart to announce their project when it’s nearing the finish line (at least, that would be the hope).
If this does end up being “PMDG-level” as far as depth goes, I think they could find some success. Only time will tell.
That’s a very good point. I suppose my comparison was more about the fact that these are both developers that are completely unknown, but are promising quite the ambitious product.
Vector apparently has 20 people on their team, so this isn’t the classic “Reddit 3d modeling project” that we see time and time again.
But I do see what you’re saying about Prosim - hopefully these guys are knowledgeable enough to do the heavy lifting on their own.
Indeed, they almost only had a model. All systems relied heavily on ProSim. Especially the first version the Fenix was basically a shell to have ProSim work in MSFS.
A nice achievement, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a lot less work than coding all systems.
It bugs me these people don’t say who they are. What are they hiding? There’s absolutely no identifying information about this company in their media. I don’t believe a word they say, and I wouldn’t do business with them. This industry has a real integrity problem.
I am very skeptical. I spent 20 years developing an honing a simulator and it is not easy. I pretty much just fly the 787-10 Asobo and in each iteration there are 20-30 very fine point changes. The autopilot is extremely complex and the last iteration added a obvious flaw. Take a look at the AP profile view… there have been scientific articles published just on that development. It will take 5 years to get a reasonable AP off the ground.
I hope Vector is successful with this project. A high fidelity 787 would be very welcoming for MSFS. I will say this though, that the the 3rd party community for MSFS is stronger than ever. First we are getting entirely new 3rd party developers like Fenix, Bluebird Simulations, Synaptic, and now Vector popping up from nowhere. Fenix turned out to be the real deal, while Bluebird also appears to have something solid, because they were allowing people to test and fly their 757 at the last FSExpo. Synaptic is backed by iniBuilds now so we’ll see how far they get. And of course Vector popping up will be a bonus, if they can actually release a decent 787.
The MSFS market has been so alluring, that iniBuilds switched from XP to MSFS, and now even Toliss is exploring MSFS with their A340 partnership with Aerosoft. And it’s not just XP developers - it’s also DCS World Developers like Heatblur. Heatblur originally did a joint project with IndiaFoxEcho on an F-14 for MSFS, and Heatblur used IndiaFoxEcho because they were more familiar with MSFS. The F-14 must have sold so well in MSFS though, that Heatblur decided to do an entirely new project by themselves - they are bringing the F-4 Phantom to MSFS as their second project, without IndiaFoxEcho.
Vector is a nice surprise, to have sprung out from nowhere. Of course, they still have to prove their worth by releasing a good 787, so that remains to be seen. But for sure, you can’t complain about the 3rd party development scene if you are an MSFS user.
They won’t be “hiding” anything for much longer. In 1 month at the latest, they’ve promised previews/showcases of different product features at their FSWeekend presentation.
Again, the organizers aren’t just going to give a presentation slot to anybody. Vector has obviously shown them something good enough to impress. That, and FSElite already had a news article written up prior to the announcement. There is obviously some movement in the background and hopefully more and more information becomes public in the coming weeks/months. I think your skepticism is fair though.
Yup, I would guess that Vector has given FSElite an actual copy to test, and they also gave the organizers of FSWeekend a copy to test as well.
There is no way FSElite would go to bat for Vector, and also FSWeekend giving them a slot, if all they had was a 3D model and nothing functional. They must have a pretty advanced 787 by now if both FSWeekend and FSElite are treating them seriously.
Hey everyone, I’m Ellie - Head of Vector Studio. Most people in the community know me as Ells and may know some of the projects I’ve worked on over the years.
We fully understand your scepticsm and we want the project itself to show you the quality and depth we are working on.
The members of our team are by no means new to the flight-sim development space and most of us are simmers, like you. A lot of the products you fly every day or see in the marketplace at one point or another, our team have worked on them.
We are not hiding anything, we are releasing information when the time is right.
We have been working in the shadows on the 787 for quite some time now and now is the time to announce it.
As Snowy mentioned we will be at FSWeekend and will be doing a Q&A on stage with FSElite which if you’re not there in person you can watch online.
I’ve already answered a lot of questions on our discord and only time will show you the work we have done and are doing with reveals.
